Maverick MIT inventor Jose Gomez-Marquez has seen the future of medical tech in the developing world: It’s made of Lego bricks, cheap cell phones and dollar-store finds.

In a venerable brick building on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus, Gomez-Marquez is busy inventing unconventional, affordable medical technologies and replicating the functionality of hundred-thousand-dollar laboratory robotics with Lego Mindstorms kits and DIY Arduino circuits.

He calls it “supply chain arbitrage” — modifying existing materials to improve people’s lives today. He strongly believes that something as simple as modifying a pill bottle — and helping locals to do so for themselves — is a powerful way to change the ground rules of health care.